Yesterday President Obama released his proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget to Congress with the intent of adding to the reduction of the federal deficit to the tune of $4 trillion. However, to achieve this the government will make further cuts to the spending habits of past and rethink when and where the spending should be done in the future.

However, as I’m a proponent for the Coast Guard I went into the proposed budget looking for what might be heading our way in terms of cuts (or additions?). We’re currently already in the midst of sequestration which slashed funding across the board as a means to save the government funds. What else could there be?

Overall the reduction to funding, though not directly established for the Coast Guard, has been proposed for DHS at large. The proposal calls for a decrease of 1.5 percent, or $615 million, below the 2012 enacted level. In the grand plan that’s not all that much. On the same note the budget cites a $1.8 billion savings across the entire department.

The Coast Guard is only mentioned a measly two time in the cuts and savings plan. I look at this as a good thing. Here they are:

Pollution Response:

It seems a little soon for people to forget that the Coast Guard, among others, recently undertook the massive response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; however, in reading, it seems some may have.In a proposed cut to the EPA (CUTS: SUPERFUND SUPPORT TO OTHER FEDERAL AGENCIES Environmental Protection Agency) it’s requested to drop an annual $6 million transfer of funds to their Hazardous Substance Superfund account. From that inject the Coast Guard annually receives $4.5 million. These are the fund that the Coast Guard uses to respond to oil drums and substances of an unknown type (excluding known oil spills and the like- those use the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund).

Reading further into the justification you’ll see “…impacts to USCG, NOAA, and DOI should be minimal due to mission-specific funding within those agencies and the continued ability to enter into interagency agreements to fund specific support taskings.” Though I’m not up-n-up on all the legal mumbo-jumbo I wonder how this would work. The Coast Guard, by law, uses different funding streams for different incidents (or potential incidents) thus if the funding for the Superfund is cut it begs the question to who will fund it. I suppose that the Coast Guard could inject their own funding but then we’re adding another $4.5 million to operational spending that we currently don’t budget for annually.

Aviation:

This is a cost saving measure as opposed to a drop in funding; nonetheless, it seems like it wasn’t thought through all the way. Though in theory the proposal of SAVINGS: SHARING EXCESS AVIATION EQUIPMENT seems like a good idea I question the long-term benefits.The measure calls for the CG and CPB to share equipment in the aviation sector as it pertains to the CG’s HU-25 Falcons and the CBP’s MX-15 sensor packages. In short, as we decommission our Falcons (17 of them in 2015) we’ll be giving CBP the radar systems (they already use them) and we’re going to use the already established maintenance system from CBP on our MX-15 sensors. It’s supposed to save $20 million between now and 2016.

The issue I have, though it won’t really mean anything to the Coast Guard, is that the systems we’ll be giving to CBP will be (are?) obsolete by the time they’ll get to use them in 2016. But, that’s just my opinion.